


Aching For Light

by halcyon_autumn



Series: The World In Our Hands [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Jesse McCree, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jesse McCree just wants to be a good person but doesn't have a super clear idea of HOW, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Overwatch, Referenced murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:38:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halcyon_autumn/pseuds/halcyon_autumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>McCree knew that his own sense of morality was a bit…murky, especially after years in Black Ops. So he damn well paid attention when something seemed right or wrong.</p><p>Well, he did now. He’d spent the last few years trying to ignore the granite block of guilt in his stomach. He’d stopped being able to meet Tracer or Winston’s eyes, and Angela’s kindness was a weight he couldn’t bear. Ana’s funeral had been the tipping point; he’d watched her coffin go into the ground with dry eyes and one thought ringing in his head: I’m glad she died before she had the chance to find out what I’ve done.</p><p>So yeah. Probably ‘bout time for a career change</p><p>Jesse McCree leaves Blackwatch, but it never really leaves him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aching For Light

McCree ran a year before Overwatch fell. He decided to run six months earlier, but you had to make preparations.

He used to dream about it when he was first recruited into Overwatch, but the tracking chip in his arm had made it impossible. Reyes had ordered it put in and told him that it couldn’t be removed, something to do with veins or arteries in his arm. Even as an angry seventeen year old he hadn’t been stupid enough to try to dig the thing out. It was possible that Reyes had lied, but it was also possible that McCree would end up bleeding out if he tried.

Angela would probably know how to remove it, but Angela would wonder why he had a tracking chip like some sort of dog. And then she’d realize why and go rain down hell on Reyes, who would start to get mighty suspicious about why McCree, after all these years, wanted the chip out. Angela couldn’t help him.

That was fine. He could think of other ways to solve the problem.

“What is wrong with you?” Angela hissed when he woke up from surgery after a mission had gone south.

“Saved six people,” McCree muttered, hazy from the anesthesia. “Six people that woulda died. Worth it.”

“Jesse, that was a ridiculous risk and I cannot believe – you lost an arm!”

McCree loved Angela like a sister, but he was also fairly practiced at tuning out these sorts of lectures. Angela could never believe that anyone else put themselves in danger, but the woman had the most noticeable getup of anyone on the team. McCree’s outfit wasn’t subtle, but at least he didn’t have _wings_.

Reyes visited him too. “You survive Ziegler’s lecture?”

“Always do,” McCree answered. “She says I’m gonna need a prosthetic.”

“Yeah, you are.” Reyes paused, and McCree cursed the heart monitor beeping away at his side. He could keep himself calm, but it was difficult, and probably would have been impossible without all the drugs in his system. “That was dumb, McCree,” Reyes said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Didn’t have any better ideas, though.”

So that took care of the chip.

He’d have the UN after him if he ran – not a big deal – and Blackwatch, which was. He’d have to hide out for a while, and that meant fake identities and a way to hide out somewhere that he wouldn’t be noticed. Faking his death would be easiest, but he barely considered it. It wouldn’t look good for him if he left Blackwatch, but he’d rather have people hate him than think he was dead. Fareeha was still aching from her mother’s death, and the few times they’d talked she’d been angry and guilty all at once. Winston spent more time by himself than he ever had before Ana died, and even Tracer couldn’t seem to cheer him up. Angela hadn’t laughed, really laughed, in weeks, and Jack –

Jack. There was another problem he was going to have to solve.

The rest of it he worked out – found and hid the money, made travel plans under identities that Blackwatch didn’t know about – but Jack Morrison really had to be told. McCree doubted that Morrison would believe him, but trying felt like the right thing to do. McCree knew that his own sense of morality was a bit…murky, especially after years in Black Ops.. So he damn well paid attention when something seemed right or wrong.

Well, he did _now_. He’d spent the last few years trying to ignore the granite block of guilt in his stomach. He’d stopped being able to meet Tracer or Winston’s eyes, and Angela’s kindness was a weight he couldn’t bear. Ana’s funeral had been the tipping point; he’d watched her coffin go into the ground with dry eyes and one thought ringing in his head: _I’m glad she died before she had the chance to find out what I’ve done._

So yeah. Probably ‘bout time for a career change

Jack would be the best person to tell, the only one on the base besides maybe Angela with the authority do so something about the problem. He could tell Angela, he supposed. Might be good to not put all his eggs in one basket. Then again, if he told Angela that he’d been torturing folks for years, she might shoot him. Not a risk he wanted to take.

McCree waited until Reyes was off on a mission to talk to Jack. The Overwatch Commander was alone in his office, glaring at several computer screens. He looked relieved when McCree walked in. “Please give me an excuse to do something besides writing reports.”

 _He won’t believe me,_ McCree though. Jack looked at everyone with trust and a sort of bone deep belief that they were good people. It had grated McCree when he first joined, and now it worried him. “Commander,” McCree said, and saw Jack straighten up as he registered that this wasn’t a social visit. “You need to know what Blackwatch is doing.”

Jack went defensive, fast. _He’s noticed something,_ McCree thought. _He’s worried about something and he’s convinced himself it ain’t a problem. Damn._ “I’m sure that if there was a problem, Gabriel would inform me. If you’re questioning his leadership –”

He wondered if Reyes knew about Jack’s loyalty to him. Hopefully Reyes was too bitter to really grasp the depth of it. Otherwise “Six months ago Commander Reyes watched me cut out a woman’s tongue,” McCree said. Jack’s eyes went wide with shock. “We needed her son to tell us the location of a Talon base in Peru.”

Jack shook his head. “That information came from legitimate channels –”

McCree cut him off again. “It game from a twenty-two year kid begging me to stop hurting his mother. And a year before that, when that dictator’s wife was shot? That was me, also under Reyes’ orders. The guy had three kids.” McCree stopped. He’d gotten good at compartmentalizing over the years, and this was the first time he’d spoken some these things out loud since giving a mission report to Reyes. “We figured he’d be more compliant if he was worried ‘bout his kids’ lives, and we needed him to know it was a real threat.”

For one moment, Jack looked so horrified that McCree hoped. And then that horror flared into anger. “How _dare_ you accuse –”

McCree cut him off again as he turned to leave. “I’m out,” he said, pausing at the door. He’d tried. Couldn’t do more than that. “I told you. You know. You can choose what to do about it, Jack, but I hope you sleep better at night than I can.”

McCree slammed the door on his way out.

 

***

 

McCree was in Scotland when the world ended. He’d just worked a job and was holed up in a tiny pub, staring with confusion at the menu. The hell was cullen skink? When the phone rang, he answered without looking. “Hello?”

“ _Jesse_ ,” Fareeha said, and nothing else.

She hadn’t spoken to him since he’d left, but he’d only heard that specific tone in her voice once. “Who’s dead?” he asked.

“Jack,” Fareeha said, and McCree closed his eyes. “And Reyes,” she continued, and his eyes opened. “One of them blew up the Swiss Headquarters after Blackwatch and Overwatch clashed.”

McCree briefly couldn’t speak.

“The news is calling it an attempted coup, but that doesn’t make sense,” Fareeha continued as he stumbled out of the pub. She knew he had answers and she expected to hear them, but she was giving him a few seconds to compose himself. He appreciated that small mercy. “Reyes dumped Blacwatch’s files before the attack. They’re….bad.”

“A coup means takin’ over the house,” McCree said, his voice finally back. For a moment, he’d only been able to think _shit_ with varying intonations. “Sounds like Reyes just wanted to burn the house down.”

Fareeha didn’t answer, just waited. McCree sighed. “I knew it was bad. I told Jack about it before I left. Didn’t expect Reyes to try an’ kill everyone though.”

“Are the files accurate?”

“Haven’t read ‘em, but they probably are.” Not like Reyes could make up anything worse than the truth.

“If Jack knew, he should have done something,” Fareeha said, all righteous anger. “He knew. He knew and he didn’t do a thing.”

“Blackwatch didn’t start out like this,” McCree said. “It got worse over time, but Jack always did see the best in things.” McCree had long since worn out his anger at Jack Morrison. Yeah, Jack should have tried to fix things long before McCree told him. But if Jack had believed what Reyes was capable of, Jack wouldn’t have been Jack. “For a long time, I thought that Blackwatch was my way of makin’ up for what I’d done before. It really was somethin’ good at the beginning.”

Of course in the end, he’d done worse things for Blackwatch than he ever had for Deadlock. But he wasn’t doing them now.

“You need to go to ground,” Fareeha said. “There’s a bounty on your head.”

He snorted. “Always was.” The scattered remains of Deadlock had hated him since he joined up with Blackwatch.

“A big one,” Fareeha said dryly. “A very big one. A lot of people want you dead, and there’s governments with questions they want answered.”

“I imagine,” he said, then paused. If she’d read the files....he knew what was in there. “You want me to lose your number, Fareeha?”

If she never wanted to speak to her again, he wouldn't blame her.

“No,” Fareeha said, definitive and immediate. “I don’t.”

“Well alright,” McCree said, mildly surprised. He’d expected her to say yes. “Fareeha, if you need anything, you let me know.”

“Says the man on the run,” she said. Her voice went – not soft, but what counted as gentle from Fareeha. “I always knew I could call you if there was a problem.”

That was nicer. Nicer than he deserved, probably. “I’m gonna take off then. I’d like to get out of here before anyone wonders what a cowboy is doing in a Scottish pub.”

“If you would stop dressing like a – nevermind,” Fareeha said. McCree wondered if she’d suddenly realized how much she sounded like Ana.

Neither of them had mentioned Reyes, he noted as they said their goodbyes and hung up. McCree wasn’t sure that words could bear the weight of his name. Sighing, he looked out over the expanse of Scottish highland, green against the slate gray of the sky. As always, it looked like rain.

In the back of his mind, he’d known that leaving Blackwatch would mean running, but now he had to confront it. It wasn’t like he’d wanted to settle down and pay a mortgage, but it would have been nice to maybe stay in one spot longer than a week. That was the dream.

 _Ah well_ , McCree thought. He’d picked up a six-shooter at fourteen and known that he would never really put it down. Even now, a year away from Reyes, McCree heard the Blackwatch Commander’s orders in his head. It took effort not to look at a situation and find a solution that wasn’t ‘kill everyone.’ Mercy and kindness didn’t come easily. And everyone who knew his name would think of Gabriel Reye’s right hand man. He could spend his whole life running, and he’d never out run that.

But he wouldn’t spend his life killing and torturing. So at the end of the day, it was something he could live with. With one last look at the threatening sky, McCree started walking. If he hurried, perhaps he could make the next train before it began to rain.

**Author's Note:**

> Cullen Skink is in fact a very tasty soup in Scotland; I ate it every chance I got where I was there. McCree is missing out.
> 
> Spoiler: McCree does not make the train before the rain starts.
> 
> McCree probably should have told EVERYONE what Blackwatch is up to, but he couldn't quite being himself to admit it. He had it in him to tell one person, and Jack seemed like a better bet than Angela (who he knows perfectly well won't shoot him; he just doesn't wanna tell her).
> 
> Like every Overwatch piece I write, this one circles Reyes without really trying to write him. This is because I desperately WANT to write Reyes but don't think I can do him justice.
> 
> Come say hi on my tumblr: buckynating.tumblr.com


End file.
